There are lots of ways to pick lottery numbers – some of which are far more helpful than others!

It’s definitely fun to paint numbers on 49 ping pong balls, throw them all in your washing machine and see what happens. It won’t improve your chances of winning though. (And no I’m not recommending this approach before someone writes in with a broken washing machine…).

We want good number picking systems that may increase your chances of winning. That’s the goal. Fun is certainly useful – we are playing a game after all. Wouldn’t it be nice to also get a better chance of winning too though?

Different Approaches To Picking Numbers

There are basically two overall approaches here. There is analyzing past results to see what kinds of patterns and trends we can find. Then there is more number based analysis where we look at the pool of numbers for the game itself, and see what we can learn from that.

I don’t think there is really any great proof for any particular way of doing this, so I would always keep fun foremost in your mind when doing it. If you don’t enjoy messing around with numbers in a spreadsheet, then this kind of thing may not be for you. There is software you can get that does some of thr grunt work for you. There is even software where you pretty much just push a button and it supposedly does all the analyzing for you and gives you the combinations to play. These can be fun too, but I wouldn’t put too much faith in them.

So What Do I Mean By Analyzing Past Results?

This kind of anlaysis is all about the history of the game. You get together all of the past results for your lottery draw, and start looking at how often things have happened.

It can be as simple as which numbers have been drawn the most – are they a bit more likely in future? What about the numbers that have been drawn the least – are they ‘due’ to come up again soon?

This can also be super complicated because you can start looking at how combinations of numbers come out. Does 15 tend to appear more often when 20 is drawn? Do you always get a number below 10 together with number 11-20? This may sound a bit ‘random’ but consider that the numbers are always loaded into the draw machine in exactly the same way, in tubes in numerical order. If you always start the same way this could potentially affect how things come out later.

So What Do I Mean By Analyzing The Pool Of Numbers?

Here we are looking at things like odd and even numbers. Do they tend to come out in certain balanced or unbalanced ways? What about high and low numbers, numbers from certain groups. What about the sum total of the balls in a combination.

I tend to not favor this kind of analysis so much, unless I can also back up what I’m doing with some kind of physical aspect of the draw. By which I mean, why would the numbers add up to a certain sum – is it because the draw machine is making those balls more likely? If not, then it’s not really going to be anything you can use to your advantage.

Do Number Picking Systems Really Work?

This is all about getting a bit of an advantage. You want to put yourself in front of all the other players who just can’t be bothered with this stuff. The ones who go out and just buy a quick pick every week, because it’s easy.

No picking system is going to start predicting 6 numbers every week and pumping jackpots into your bank account. The lottery company would notice that and realise something was wrong with their game. It is supposed to be as random as possible after all.

That’s the thing though. They make it random enough don’t they. Beyond that it doesn’t really matter if it’s “perfectly random”, because well, creating perfect randomness is actually really bloody hard. How do you even prove it’s perfectly random? Think about it – you can’t! So they settle for something that looks pretty darn close, and leave it at that. Which is what leaves those of us who can be bothered with the possibility of a bit of an edge, if we’re willing to do the grunt work for it!